A new poem

This is the first poem I've written without a specific reason (mostly, to be Christmas presents for people) for several years. I'm quite pleased with it. It's quite short, so don't be scared to read it. I hope you like it. I'm not sure what to call it yet.

I want to be as small as possible.

Creep through the cracks between the painting and the frame,

sleep in between the spaces of my ribcage,

a hand of golden sand that waterfalls right through your fingers.

I want to live inside the pocket of my jeans,

pass underneath your radar like a stealthy size six ninja.

I want to be as big as I can possibly be.

My shadow casts its shade over your soul,

when my fingers click, your ears will chime like church bells,

my eyes will burn a migraine in your mind.

Your memory so full of me it creaks and winces,

my voice a siren song you can’t ignore.

I want to be as small as possible.

Disappear in a blink onto the brink of the horizon,

pass through the fabled eyes of pins and needles,

become a ball that falls between the cobble stones.

I want to fill the floorboard gaps when I lie down.

I want to be as small as I can force myself to be.

Ink

As some of you may have seen, I had a new tattoo done last week. My biggest, most expensive, most painful – and probably best loved – tattoo to date. I wonder if pain, size and money will always work in inverse proportion to fondness like that? My guess is it will do; after all, the more we humans invest in things, the more we feel like we should have got out of them. Even if I hated it, I would never be able to see it that way, having been in pain for so many hours and having shelled out so much money that my wallet actually wouldn’t shut before I handed the wodge of cash over. Not that I do, in any way, hate it – I am entranced with it, enraptured. I’m in love with my hips, just as Roger Taylor was in love with his car.

This is my third tattoo that means something. Given that I have (I think, I keep losing count – numbers are really not my strong suit) 24 tattoos, I think this is a level of shallow of which to be proud. That’s a lot of meaningless prettiness, and let’s face it – that’s the best kind.

The first tattoo I had that meant anything in terms of having some significance more than me liking the way it looks is the fairly crappy dragon I’ve got on my stomach, which is now looking so faded and shabby compared to the brilliant black of the new one. It’s not the greatest tattoo in the world and was picked randomly from a piece of flash on the wall of the shop I frequented in Crewe, where I lived in the third year of my first degree. Would I say I regretted it? No, I don’t think so. I clearly could have put something better in that space, but it does mean something and so I do love it.

NB - I only have one tattoo I actively regret, and that’s the big fairy-with-an-kaleshnikov on my right leg. I had that one done really quickly after the genuinely brilliant fairy-with-an-AK on my left leg and this fairy is just trying to catch that one’s vapours. It’s also the only I tried to draw, and given that I can’t draw, it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s not very good. Plus she looks like she’s sunburnt. It’s a shame it’s so very big, but regretting a tattoo really isn’t the ‘my life is over’ disaster that one would think it is. It’s actually more on a par with a hang nail that keeps catching on your jumper. Irritating, but you’ll live. I have vague plans to have a couple of laser sessions on it and have something better put over it, but there’s no massive rush.

So, back to the dragon. I had it done at the end of my first real relationship. My first true love, for whom I fell so hard. I really thought we were forever, and I still think wistfully of him from time to time today, even though he’s now as good as married with two kids. There are times when he looms so large in my subconscious that I can’t quite believe we were only together for a year or so. Our relationship was all fireworks and magic tricks, it was one of the greatest times of my life, but it fell apart for reasons I can’t even really remember now – something to do with his band and me having totally unrealistic expectations, like the foolish 19 year old that I was. It was my first taste of real, grown-up love. In all my memories of that time, the sun seems to be shining. Clearly, this was not the case – but why ruin a good bit of nostalgic mooning with something as tedious as the facts?

What I do remember clearly, though, is getting that dragon done to mark the end of the relationship, to have something on my body that he didn’t know about, so that I was mine again, and not his. Not quite so daft, my 20 year old self, it’s actually quite a canny idea I think. And it means new ink, which is always a winner.

The second tattoo I have that means something – and I only even realised that it does mean something as I started typing this blog – is my trio of Madonna heads, on the inside of my left arm, which I took from a book called Madonna in Art that a different ex boyfriend gave me. I love those Madonna heads.

Madonna means a lot to me. I don’t love everything she does – adopting 12 million kids whose parents, it turns out, are still alive, isn’t really top of my list of Good Things To Do – but nonetheless she is the closest I’ve got to a God, I think. There are three reasons for this. Firstly, and most importantly, the music. Yeah, she’s got it wrong a couple of times, but mostly, she’s got it right, and got it right again and again and again. The longevity of the woman deserves your respect even if, for some odd reason (maybe some kind of childhood accident?) you don’t like her music. I mean, come on – name me one other musician who has been so relevant throughout the 80s, 90s, 2000s and on into this decade… and Kylie doesn’t count! (I don’t really get it with Kylie. She’s got about three brilliant tunes (Come Into My World, It’s In Your Eyes, Confide in Me, oh, and Can’t Get Your Out of my Head… ok, four) and is clearly quite perky and sweet, but other than that, she’s stunningly underwhelming, no?)

The second reason I love Madonna so is that I think she’s beautiful. Her arms look a bit odd these days, but I still definitely would. Have you seen how bendy she is???

The third reason is that, strange baby adopting ways aside, she is a proper inspiration to me on a daily basis. She pulled herself up from nothing and is so totally in charge of everything she does – and everything she does (apart from the babies) (oh, and quite a lot of the movies, I’m not a total idiot) is spectacular. She’s clever and thorough and she’s got balls. We need more women like her in this world. She’s not perfect – she’s got gappy teeth and she gets things wrong sometimes and that song she did with Prince was a massive let-down – but we get so many seemingly perfect women shoved in our faces from all angles that a bit of hard work and grit and imperfection is exactly what we all need.

So yes – that is why my Madonna tattoos mean something to me.

This new tattoo is the third one that has a meaning – and I guess that meaning ties up with what I have just been saying about imperfections.

If I was clever enough, I would now draw a Venn Diagram and insert it into this blog, but it’s late and I’m tired and I’m not sure how I’d go about it. This Venn Diagram would be all the people in the world who have Madonna tattoos, and all the people in the world who have Leonard Cohen tattoos, and where they intersect. If any blog readers fit, like me, into the middle of that diagram, please come round to my house at once so I can marry you.

I didn’t think I liked Leonard Cohen for many years when I was a young, idiot child. This was a time when I thought Derek B (anyone remember his Good Groove?) was god’s greatest gift to hip hop, so plainly, I was not to be trusted. My father is a massive Leonard Cohen fan, a fact that has informed one of the oft-told stories of my heritage. My nan, on hearing this piece of information, warned my mum not to marry him as she thought no man who liked that kind of racket would ever be happy.

I chuckle, but it’s something I don’t really understand. I know the myth is that Leonard Cohen is really miserable – just as the myth is that Morrissey is really miserable – but I don’t really see it. Yeah, both of them have some sad songs, but which decent musical act doesn’t? Bands who only have happy songs end up being like D:Ream, and funny as Brian Cox is, that's not something to be aimed for. Moz n Len also have funny songs, uplifting songs, beautiful songs, fast songs, slow songs… anyone who was just miserable would be the kind of one-trick pony who would get tiresome pretty damn quickly and no mistake.

I realised my error re Laughin’ Len, as I like to call him, around the age of 14. I’m not sure what it was that showed me I was wrong – probably my brother making the same realisation and pointing out my wrong-doing to me. I basically liked anything he told me to like back in those days – apart from the Wedding Present. Never, ever the Wedding Present. I do not approve of Dave Gedge and his dreadful lumpish moaning. But I have loved Leonard Cohen with a love that runs deep and true ever since.

Anthem, the song from which my latest tattoo comes, is my favourite Leonard Cohen song (probably) and it’s a beauty. I had a birthday party a couple of years back which I didn’t enjoy at all – I was ill, and starting to realise that the party lifestyle I was leading wasn’t for me – and I got all a bit overcome at one point and started sobbing. A fairly common occurrence for me. I don’t think it’s really a party unless I’ve spent AT LEAST ten minutes crying somewhere on the premises.

My DJ life partner knew what I needed. She lay me on a soft mattress, stuck some headphones in my ears, and played me Len singing Anthem from his Live in London album. Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in. Listening to that tune at that moment will remain one of my favourite memories forever, I think. I won’t expound upon the greatness of the lyrics for you, as there would be nothing I could say that would add it to. If you don’t know it, go and buy it from iTunes (yes, BUY IT, I said, give Len your money!) and educate yourself for the better.

I used to have the above line from the song as my ‘something about yourself’ on Facebook, but then the buggers went and changed the profile page, and I knew I needed to rectify the lack of this quote in my life.

I had the idea to have it tattooed somewhere on my person on boxing day. I originally wanted it on my head – which was actually why I got my Mohican – but quickly realised it wouldn’t fit. I pondered on it for a month or so, came up with the idea of having it snaking round my hips a few weeks ago, and got it done as quickly as I could because it seemed such a genius idea I felt that if I left it any longer, someone else would get there first. And it is, I think, my favourite tattoo. There is a crack, a crack in everything… that’s how the light gets in. What could be more perfect?

It hurt a hell of a lot, especially directly over my hip bones, and took ruddy hours, but it was worth it. I’m not sure how I’m going to top it. Any ideas? Answers on a postcard, please…

Give Up

(NB – the title of this blog is, in case you didn't know, a reference to the marvellous Postal Service album of the same name. Not only is that album beautiful, clever and well-crafted, but I think it deserves props alone for its stupendously miserable name.

Allow me an anecdote before we begin, if you will... I spent many long hours puzzling over the name of the album, loving it, but wondering if it might possibly have a double meaning which I was missing as it just seemed so unabashedly negative. Ben Gibbard, singer and genius lyricist of the Postal Service, is known for his love of words which have double meanings, so it seemed odd to me that the album title should only seem to mean one thing; a thing which, for me, brings Homer Simpson to mind – ‘You tried your best and failed miserably. The lesson is… never try.’ It took a rather more positive person than I am to point out to me that it could also mean surrender, in a positive sense, as in surrender to the music. Try as I might, I would never have seen that more positive meaning by myself, which tells you just about all you need to know about me. That more positive meaning of 'give up' is not, however, the theme of this blog. You will be shocked to learn.)

(NB 2 – oh, and also, I now have Lost by Nine Inch Nails, a similarly cheery sentiment, stuck in my head. Gave up trying to figure it out, but my head got lost along the way… Come on! If you know it, sing along!)

The last 18 months have seen me give up a hell of a lot of things. Cigarettes. The Other Thing (forgive me for slight crypticness, reader, the walls have ears). Sex. Watching telly and being on my computer in bed. Alcohol. Wheat. And now, it seems like dairy might have to be next. I have withstood the previous six, but I fear the seventh might be the end of me. A life without cheese is surely no kind of life at all. Plus, I fear that if I have to give one more thing up, I will have to spend the rest of my life sitting still in my room and waiting to die.

I have given up smoking three times in my life now – three times of note, anyway. I started smoking when I was 15, for exactly the same reason, I imagine, that everyone starts smoking… to impress my friends. Of course, I would rather have died than admit that at the time. I had new friends, friends that were higher up the social strata than me, friends that, I felt, needed impressing. I had risen up from the ranks of the unremarkable to suddenly join the forces of the louder, more stylised, more in trouble kids, and I knew that I needed a stronger passport than just my encyclopaedic knowledge of Smiths lyrics to be properly accepted. Cigarettes seemed like the easiest way in.

I didn’t really like smoking at first – who does? It tasted like hot, dirty smoke. Obviously, in hindsight, since that’s what it is, but I suppose I, in my innocence, thought it would taste like mournful French movies and delicate Victorian poetry, not like the muck scraped from the bottom of a gutter. However, I choked my way through it and grimly clung on, until someone gave me my first menthol cigarette (I feel like those things should come from Fisher Price – My First Cigarette, they could be called, so lethal and kiddie and tempting that they are) and all my smoking-related woes sailed away on that cool, mountain stream.

Ahhh, Consulate cigarettes. Even now, after giving up attempt no. 3, the one that I hope will stick, I feel tempted when I see that packaging - which, fortunately, isn't very often. Those are MY cigarettes – if anyone else has a pack, it’s just because they’re holding them for me. Oh, the power of the brand… and I’m not talking about Russell, for once.

I smoked menthol cigarettes like they were going out of fashion for the next – blimey – six years, until I was in the third year at university, when my friend Petra and I gave up together, mid-way through the year. That lasted a year and a half, I think – a good long time, so that I felt that I would never go back.

The thing that made me go back in the end was getting a job and living in my own flat. I had spent so many years smoking out hanging out the window at my parents house, and waiting til I was round the corner before I lit up (how I *ever* thought I was fooling them, I really don’t know) that once I was living somewhere where I could smoke whenever I wanted without fear of reprisal, it made me want to smoke like crazy, even though I’d given up some 18 months before. So I gave it, and started again.

That lasted for a year, and then I gave up again… this time for seven long years.

I started smoking for the third and final time for the world’s most stupid reason – I’d heard that my old boyfriend had a new girlfriend (are we spotting a pattern, here, readers?) – he’d rung up to tell me, something boys seem to keep feeling the need to do to me (for future reference, boys – please don’t do this, no matter how well meaning you’re being, I’d so much prefer to hear it from someone else so I can cry and get mad and do all those things any human would do, rather than having to pretend it's fine cos I want to look cool in front of you… I mean, seriously)… so I decided that the surest way to show him that he’d lost out on the prize of a lifetime was to take up smoking again. Don’t ask me why, it wasn’t very logical.

I continued for about 4 or 5 months, I think, maybe longer, before realising that what had started as a joke was beginning to catch hold and I’d better get a handle on it before it all went wrong again, so I took myself in hand and gave up again. That was 18 months ago now, and this has been the easiest of the things I've given up. It’s a vile habit and one I don’t miss at all.

The next one was the Other Thing. I have waxed lyrical about that a few blogs ago, so I won't bore you all again. I'll just say that it's been nearly a year now and it's not a decision I've regretted for one moment since I made it. It hasn't meant that my life is perfect now - I certainly don't wake up every day with a six inch smile on my face - I don't think I'll ever do that, no matter how many things I give up and how much therapy I have - but when I think back to the way I used to have to struggle through the week, I'm pretty sure I'm never going to want to go back there. It hasn't been a fix for my life. I don't regret a moment of those times either. But it is a chapter of my life that is finished for now. There might be a sequel - there might not be. But as far as that whole saga goes, the taking part and the ducking out... I genuinely have no regrets. And there's not many areas of my life I can say that about.

So... sex. Again, I won't harp on. But the longer I'm being single, the less interested I'm finding myself in men. I am currently toying with a vague and curiously attractive fantasy that I'm going to stay celebate forever and become re-virginised, and life is going to become simple and easy and lovely, a bit like something out of Anne of Green Gables. Of course, it has only been a few months, I'm sure I'll tire of it pretty quickly. But seriously... the sulking, the whining, the needing to explain every little thing, the arguments, the pettiness, the heartache, the having to share your bed... who needs it? Currently, and happily... not me. I'll start missing the nicer things soon, but hopefully not for a good long while yet.

And while I take my hats off to the girls who can have sex outside of relationships, I'm really not a person that works for. I get waaaay too attached, waaaaaay too quick. I only need to lock eyes with someone before I'm thinking about china patterns and picking out a dress. I say this as a warning to any would-be interested men reading this (of which I'm sure there are thousands, natch); seriously. Leave me alone. I'm mental.

I think the most surprising thing I've given up, out of everything, is alcohol. I've been drunk on one occasion in 2011... which means I've only drunk alcohol on one occasion in 2011, cos everyone knows the only reason you'd ever drink booze is to get drunk... right? Right??

I stopped drinking to make my sleep better. And it's working. It's not always perfect, but I am sleeping so much better than I ever used to. And I was only trying to sleep better in order to make me less miserable, and - don't laugh - I actually think that's working too. Yes, I've spent a good portion of this month boo-hooing about The Couple That Shall Not Be Mentioned, but I think it would have been a whole hell of a lot worse if alcohol and - hence - a lack of sleep were still in the picture.

When I first stopped drinking, it was hard, I won't deny it. But even then, it was a lot less hard than I thought it would be. The first couple of social occasions I went to, I spent the week beforehand worrying about... but then only the first ten minutes of being there worrying. Once I was past those first ten minutes, it was easy. I think there are three tricks to not drinking: one, getting through that first ten minutes. Two, taking a really nice soft drink that you actually want to drink with you - I recommend an unusual fruit juice and a bottle of fizzy water to mix together. Three, knowing for yourself that this is what you want to do, and not worrying about what other people say. This third one is the hardest.

For me, the fact that I need to not drink in order to sleep - and this was bought home to me with a startlingly bright spotlight on the one occasion this year where I did drink, when I PINGED awake at 4am and lay in bed feeling anxious and hating myself until I finally got up some five hours later - makes it easier. There are times when I am tempted, but at the end of the day, I know that I would always (at the moment) rather sleep than get drunk. And plus, I can drive to places now, which is much nicer than getting the fecking bus or having to sleep (or not) on other people's uncomfortable sofas.

I only ever meant to give up for a month, but it's approaching two now (if you don't count that one night) and I'm not sure I'll ever go back. I'm going on holiday soon... I don't know what I'm going to do about that... but the rules are - there are no rules, as Chandler once said. So we'll see what transpires.

NB no. 3 - I do hope I'm not coming across as the kind of self-righteous prig you all want to beat to death upon reading this. I love drinking. I love to get drunk. I am deeply jealous of those of you out there who can drink and sleep. But I'm not one of those people, and I got so bored of lying awake feeling anxious and hating myself, something had to be done about it. At least now all my anxiety and self-hatred is confined to the daylight hours, where it's much more manageable, ho ho.

Giving up watching TV and surfing the net in bed is a Paul McKenna related thing. It has sucked - I have conquered it now. It's not massively interesting, so I shall only say this - I may even be getting rid of the massive telly in my bedroom and buying a zebra-print chaise longue to go in its place. Watch this space.

And so, to the ever-fashionable food intolerances which I seem to have suddenly acquired. You would think, that with giving every fun in the world ever up, I would be a blooming blossom of health, wouldn't you? Sadly, you would be wrong. Stomach aches have been the bain of my life for about a year now. Perhaps longer - in fact, when I properly think about it, almost certainly longer. What I am realising is that giving everything else up has given me a clear enough head to do that thing that hippies are always banging on about - listening to my body, maaaaan. Oh, the shame.

And what does my body seem to be telling me? That it really doesn't like wheat. Oh, the humanity! Couldn't my reward for this seeming preparation for nunnery be, I dunno, a Pulitzer, or a pony, or at the very least a plate of toast? No, even this last has been grabbed away from me. I'm not going to go into the exact details of what wheat seems to be doing to me, because it isn't really seemly. But I want it to stop. And so I am shopping in the Free From aisles now and suddenly feeling a lot more empathy for my several coeliac friends. It's a bloody good job I've given up drinking as, with wheat-free pasta being something crazy like £25 a packet, I wouldn't be able to afford any gin anyway.

The results have been almost depressingly instant. On stopping eating wheat, my stomach aches stopped like that - *clicks imaginary fingers*. Why, you might ask, is that depressing? Because it means I'm most probably right and am having to give up bread and crackers and biscuits and couscous and barley and even, I have just discovered, my beloved squash!

However, it really isn't so bad. Who cares about the crackers, I have been stoically telling myself, as long as I can have the cheese? I can put cheese on my hand and eat it right off that, like I am my own pony. Everyone wins! The crackers can live to fight another day - they're only a fancy plate anyway. But... the other day, I had a dinner which contained a large amount of cheese. I've not been eating a lot of cheese lately as I've been on a diet, trying to lose all the love-makes-you-fat directly followed by miserable-Christmas-alone weight I put on in 2010, but I was cooking for a friend and made something that involved some Philadelphia light. And oh GOD, the stomach ache it gave me was horrendously horrific, as a charming girl on Come Dine with Me recently said.

I had had no wheat in that meal, that day, that week. Nothing else was awry. I can only conclude it was the cheese.

Of course, I have been wrong before. I remember it clearly, it was a Tuesday. (Sorry, old joke, but I love it so.) And here's hoping I am wrong again. But only time will tell. And if I am right... well, I really might as well go sit still in my room and wait for death to take me.

Swimming in the Rain

Well, what a morning I’ve had! I’m not sure any close friends of mine who are reading this – or, indeed, anyone who has spoken to me for more than about 15 minutes – will quite believe that this blog is based in reality rather than being a slightly damp fairy tale, but let me assure you… every word is true. Well, actually, I can’t make that assurance as this is the first paragraph and I’ve not written every word yet – I may edit some bits out or exaggerate others for effect, a skill I have honed finely over 34 years on this planet and don’t see why I should give up now – but the bare bones of the story, at least, are true.

Last weekend my DJ life partner and I had a gig. As is my wont in these nunnery-like days, I left at around 1am as was way too tired to keep my eyes open much longer. However, in the brief time that I was there between finishing DJing and hurrying off home, I got chatting to a friend of mine – a guy I have known and thought very well of for some years, but never got to know that well. He happened to mention to me that he goes swimming in a lido near where we both live, and that it's heated.

I love swimming, and I love swimming outside, and I love heated things - and the all-new teetotal Johanna is all about the exercise, so I decided I wanted some of that action and messaged said fella to see if I could come with him some time. I was suggesting after work on a Saturday but, alas, due to the shortness of the days, the pool closes before I finish. So he suggested BEFORE work, and I figured, what the hell, I get up at 6.30 for yoga once a week, I'm good at getting up... why not?

However, last night was the worst night's sleep I've had in months, the worst I've had since I joined the Great Cult of McKenna. I listened to the CD one and a half times (I reached my hand out to get my drink half way through the first time and, in the newly pitch black bedroom, did what I keep doing now and knocked something off the bedside table onto the CD player, stopping the CD in its tracks... and so back to the beginning, sigh), read the book for a bit, tried to sleep some more and must eventually have succeeded, but woke up (by my calculations) about 4 hours later and didn't get back to sleep at all, but instead was afforded the joy of lying awake being unable to get the image of my ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend, currently on a charming little screensaver in my brain, out of my mind (you know the kind of thing... oh look, here they are, laughing at the things you two used to laugh at! Remember that cafe you thought was yours and his? Oh, it's theirs now. That look he used to give you? Yup, hers now... I'm not sure he could even pick you out of a line-up any more, etc etc, add your own little twist, they're endless, as I'm sure you well know). So that was a delightful way to pass a few hours. I kept trying to turn my brain to higher thoughts, but it turned out there aren't any higher thoughts at 4am and I just gave in in the end.

So I got up at 6.45 and went into the bathroom. Hmm, I thought to myself. What could that noise be? Sounds like loads of rifles going off... or loads of tap dancers... or someone popping a never-ending roll of bubble wrap... OH! It's armageddon, in the form of rain. Awesome!

I had a shower and got dressed, thinking perhaps it wasn't as bad as it sounded... but then after getting dressed stood, looking out the window, for really quite a while, as if hoping that the rain would respond to my Devil Stare and go away.

I'm not sure if I've ever explained my deep down, gut wrenching, misery inducing hatred - it's the only word that will do - of rain. I loathe it with a deadly loathing, and I think anyone who says they think otherwise needs their head examined. It makes everything soggy! And grey! And cold! And muddy! And SOGGY! It ruins festivals! And holidays! And otherwise perfectly decent Mondays! What other reasons do you need? Why on earth would you want to be wet and cold when you could be hot and dry? It's logic!

Of course, I know that, on an intellectual, Al Gore kinda level, the world needs rain, but if it could just always rain while I'm asleep and, since that's usually by about 9.30 these days, all the crazy people who say they like it can go jump in puddles all night long if they like, and then the sun can come back out when I wake up again. Sound good? Yes, thank you please!

Anyway, sorry, got distracted there for a moment. Of course, every logical fibre of my being was telling me to get back into bed and forget this crazy, madcap plan - after all, why go and swim in the rain when I could lie and torture myself with crazy jealous thoughts in my nice warm bed for hours instead? But... I didn't have the phone number of the lovely guy I was meeting. And to stand someone up at an ordinary time of day isn't something I could ever conceive of doing. To do so at 7.46am (the time we were meeting) would be unconscionable. So I girded my loins and set out in the rain.

Sadly, it turned out I had spent too long gazing out the window trying to commune with the sky through the power of my mind (oh, and posting on Facebook before I left the house, natch), and I missed the train by about 2 seconds. I must confess - standing on that train platform in the downpour, realising I was going to be late (which I hate nearly as much as rain) to go and swim in the rain, and that I had to sit in the rain, reading soggy PhD related papers cos I'm busy at the moment to observe my 'fun books are allowed at the weekend' plan, at 7.30am on a Saturday morning, when... well, I think I've made my point about this already, but when other people were in places I would much rather be... I did experience a bit of a low point. I said 'fuck' quite a bit and kicked things. Being a nice kind of person, I didn't want the rain to feel left out, so my face joined in.

However, time passed, as it inevitably does, and I got on the train and met my friend, who was fortunately still waiting for me and didn't mind me being late. Are we really doing this? I asked, indicating the rain. Of course, he said... it hadn't occured to him that we wouldn't.

And so, off we set, walking across the green towards the pool. I told him about how the last time I had gone swimming, there had been a fire alarm and I was made to go and stand outside on the street in my pants. He told me about a comedy night he had been to the night before in which one of the audience members delivered the ultimate heckle by attempting to start a fight with a comedian.

We arrived. I got changed, a little unable to believe I was really doing this. And then I went outside, and got into the pool... and do you know what...

It was pretty nice.

I've not gone completely crazy, don't worry - it would have been a hell of a lot nicer in the blazing sunshine, as every single thing in the world is... but it wasn't half bad. The water was heated, which helped a lot. But there was something so surreal about being outside, in hot water, with loads of other people, on such a cold and rainy morning, it felt like it must have been a dream. All the steam rising off the water helped with that - you literally couldn't see one end of the pool from the other.

I couldn't really feel the rain. At times I thought it must have stopped, but I could still see drops of it hitting the water and making those little circles in the water, like the rings of clay on a pottery wheel that are so innately pleasing.

The pool itself was charming. More of an actual swimming pool than the lake I was picturing, Hamsptead Heath style - and with pictures at either end of crazy English people standing in the snow, in their swimmers, which struck me as so fitting that I giggled each time I reached the end of the pool, usually meaning I inhaled a bunch of chlorinated water and ended up choking. Mmm, graceful.

There was something about being in that water while the rest of London slept all around us. No-one said much to each other, but it felt like we were all in a secret club. I will definitely be going back.

However, the rainy fun had to end some time, and eventually, I had to get out of the pool so that I wouldn't be late for work. You really are going to think I'm making this bit up, but I'm not... as I was getting out of the pool, a fire alarm started. I kid you not. Having learnt last time about hanging around hoping it wasn't real (and hence getting ushered out in my pants instead of having time to grab a towel), I made an immeadiate bolt for the changing rooms, where I managed to get dressed without burning to death. However, I apparently did miss a fight between a swimmer and a lifeguard, which I can't help feeling a little sad about. Clearly, though, fire alarms and fights follow me and my new friend around, so hopefully I'll get to watch the next one. Maybe if I'm lucky it'll be raining.

Trouble or loneliness?

So, dear reader, I am alone again, naturally.

(Notum bear-eh: I say alone, but really, that is pretty unfair on my lovely friends, who would never leave me alone. I am very lucky to have the best friends a girl could possibly ask for. Elaine, Millena, James, Kaye, Rachel, Jen, Rosch… I would be sunk without you lot, so props and mad skills and all of that stuff, and sorry that I’m always, always whinging.)

Bits of last year – because of true love - were the happiest of my life. Other bits were a horrendous, tangled web of romantic nonsense, which hurt my head, my heart and my stomach, and which have chewed me up and spat me out and left me stranded on the shore of misery like Kevin Costner at the beginning of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, minus the terrible accent. I had the most lovely, beautiful, wonderful, kind and sweet relationship of my life, which had to end for reasons that I know are good but which I’m still railing against on a daily basis.

I feel like I must be way too old for this kind of stuff now. Heartbreak suits teenagers, even 20-somethings can get away with it. I’m nearly 35 now, middle-aged by Biblical standards, and this look is getting a bit old. I fear I am becoming ridiculous. I can see some of my mates rolling their eyes at Johanna and her latest romantic escapade, fondly, to be sure, the way parents roll their eyes at errant teens who are freshly in love twice a week – but still it stings like lemon on a paper cut, and still it makes me wince. No-one wants to feel ridiculous.

See, the thing is, for most of my grown up life, I’ve wanted the thing that proper feminists aren’t supposed to want – the thing it seems shameful to admit. I’ve wanted to be in a relationship. Fuck it, let’s be honest… I’ve wanted to get married. I want my happy ever after. Don’t we all? (Really, that’s a genuine question – don’t we?) It’s not that I don’t feel complete without a man (she protests too much, perhaps). I have a life, I have a job, I have friends, I’m perfectly capable of ferrying myself home at the end of a night without wanting to slit my wrists from the loneliness. But when I am in a relationship that’s working, I am happier. I love having someone to share things with. I love getting messages from someone who makes me feel special. I love being able to spoil someone I love. Is that really so wrong? Do I have to give back my Cynthia Heimel books now?

But… of course… when I’m in a relationship that isn’t working – as all relationships inevitably don’t, after a while – that’s when I’m at my most miserable. Well, that, and when the relationships come crashing to an end. I hate feeling like my emotions can be controlled by other people that easily, and I hate feeling so trivial, that the main things that make me so miserable, or so happy, are affairs of the heart. Shouldn’t I have that aspect of my life under control, in some way at least, by now? Shouldn’t intellectual and political and charitable things play more of a leading role in my emotional life? But then, at the end of the day, what is more important than our connections with other people? Not much, really. So maybe I should stop beating myself up about it.

I’ve found myself wondering recently if it’s me. Do I set my standards too high with what I expect from relationships? I feel as if – apologies, ex-boyfriend – I am constantly being let down by men. And I like to think it’s pretty rare that a person feels let down by me. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but I don’t think so. Relationships – and by that I mean with everyone, not just with men – are the most important thing in my life. That’s why I do everything I do, because, for all my Sartre-esque posturing, I love people and am fascinated by them and I want to understand them and be good to them. True, I’m terrified of talking to them when I don’t know them, and tend to turn that into a joke (a joke I take way too seriously) about how I don’t want to talk to people anyway cos they all suck… and that is a stumbling block, but still…

My interest in people is why I love psychology, it’s why I’m a counsellor, it’s why I work hard to be a good friend and to be welcoming on the board I post on, it’s why, when I’m in a relationship, I try to be the best girlfriend I could possibly be. I don’t understand why other people aren’t the same. Why other things seem more important to them. It baffles me and I keep not being able to believe it, no matter how many times I encounter it.

Sometimes I think I’m sane and it’s everyone else who is flaky and useless and sub-standard. And other times I think I’m most probably a scary, demanding bitch who people are lucky to have run screaming from. Perhaps what I want from a relationship doesn’t come from a place of generous sanity – perhaps it comes from insecurity and a desperate, pathetic need to make everyone – anyone - like me.

But then I always end up thinking – so what if I have got high standards? I really think I would rather be alone than have to compromise over the things that I think are basic decency and sense. I may change my mind about that at some point in the future, but for now, I’m comfortable with that. As Chandler once said to Monica – you may be high maintenance, but I like… maintaining you. Ok, so I’m currently maintaining myself (minds out the gutter, boys), but the fact remains that I don’t see high maintenance as the dirty words that others seem too. And – again with the protesting too much – I think I’m actually a lot more chilled than I may come across as being at times. Who knows.

I wrote a couple of big, posturing blogs last year about how I was going to take a year off men. And I really did mean it, though it didn’t work out that way – something I am very glad of. I’m wary of making another such promise as I’m in no rush to make myself look that daft again. But I do feel like something has changed in me, at least for the time being. I could not be less interested in men at the moment. My current life is jam-packed full, and safe, and quiet, and that is a real relief to me right now.

Things are ok, mostly. I go to uni and work on Mondays, I work on Tuesdays, I have uni Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I work Saturdays. I go to yoga Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I try to go to the gym once more than that every week. I might go out on a Saturday night, and I do my best to make sure I can spend Sundays on the sofa with my home girl. It’s quiet and nice and there’s no complications in my head. It’s a little boring at times, and there are quite a lot of evenings when I find myself crying, a lot. But at least it’s not hard emotional work.

So it seems that, as far as romance goes, there are two options: trouble, or loneliness. I’m not sure which is better; I’m not sure which is worse. For now, though, I am going to stay inside my house and lick my wounds. More updates as and when, I’m sure.

Skin Deep

I am obsessed with the way I look.

That doesn’t mean I spend hours gazing into the mirror thinking how fabulous I am, all evidence to the contrary. However – if I totalled up the amount of time I spent thinking about my hair, my face, my piercings, my tattoos, my weight, my clothes, my make-up, and donated that time to charity… well, I’m sure no Ethiopian children would ever feel ugly again.

I could probably write seven blogs on this topic, one for each of the above categories, but I suspect that an entire column dedicated to my face-related woes or how whenever I wear make-up it seems to end up dripping down my cheeks not three minutes later would probably start to bore people, and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t know that you’re all dangling on my every word (ha ha). Hence, I need to try to condense all this image-angst into one chocolate covered bite-sized (oh! The calories!) chunk.

When I was a kid, I went through a phase of being a tom boy. This was during the phase of my live when I loved animals – all animals, any animals, even woodlice and worms and those weird looking cats with no hair – better than I loved my own family. I considered worrying about hair, rather than, say, the plight of starving Spanish donkeys or badly beaten racehorses, to be deeply infra dig and so tried to see how long I could go for without washing my hideous boy-ish mop, before my mother would forcibly hold me under the shower and scrub my head with a bar of soap.

I dressed entirely in jumble sale puffa jackets and hand-me-down jodhpurs that were about 6 sizes too big for me. The only item of clothing I had any passion for was the silk on my riding hat, which was red, black and shiny.

I looked horrific – I don’t know how my poor mother dealt with dragging me into public, especially as this greasy-haired, horse-poo-covered look was nicely topped off with lots of sanctimonious comments about vegetarianism and battery farming… seriously, I would have drowned myself in the lake had I had to bring me up, so can we all give my mum a round of applause – but I was happy. I’m sure there’s a homily in there somewhere, but I am choosing not to see it.

When did the obsession with how I looked begin? It started when I discovered the world of being a Goth. And rack my brains as I might, I can’t think what made me decide that smearing my face with white powder, dying my hair black, drawing spider webs coming out of my eyes, tying bandanas around the tops of my DM boots and wearing black, fringey skirts, a hat, an overcoat and a permanent scowl was a good idea. Other than logic and good sense, of course. Winky face.

Actually, thinking about it for another minute or so, I realise that it was, of course, the teenager’s best friend that made me decide the gothic life was for me… the pressure of wanting to fit in. Not that being a Goth was ever painful for me ­- once you got away from the exquisite pain of merely drawing breath that every Goth girl feels, of course. I never dressed that way against my will… but I’m sure it was a case of monkey see, monkey do. To be sure, I took the whole white face/black everything else further than the friends I had been trying to impress ever did, but then I’ve never really understood the meaning of the word moderation.

This was my first foray into the world of caring about what I looked like, and my god, did I embrace it with both arms. Years of fraught arguments with my parents over hair dye, make-up, piercings and tattoos were to follow. I imagine that my parents, looking at me dressed from head to toe in vast swathes of tent-like black, replete with the requisite fringes and mirrors, the black relieved only by the patchy white powder plastered on my face, longed to be able to argue with me about skirts that looked liked belts and a face daubed in too much blusher. Instead, I remember my father once looking me and saying, with a sigh that rattled the armchairs, ‘You’re such a pretty girl, Johanna. Why do you contrive to make yourself look so ugly?’

A whole new world accompanied this image change – a world full of gigs in smoky rooms, dancing with my arms tracing ethereal shapes in the sky, as if I was in a trance – a world punctuated by hours spent in murky second hand record shops, flicking through the Mission and Siouxsie sections for that elusive picture disc – a world of poetry and self harm and pints of snakebite and black. What came first, the music or the image? As Nick Hornby once nearly said, did I listen to gothic music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to gothic music?

I remained a Goth – secretly piercing my tongue the day before I started at uni, and dreaming about marrying Andrew Eldritch – until mid-way through my first year, when I suddenly became a brightly coloured, bubble-gum rave kid, dressing in children’s t-shirts, animal ears and little skirts, never dreaming of going out of the house without that most essential of items for a 20-year-old… a water pistol. To be sure, I still had the odd day where I would wear my long red velvet coat and my black PVC trousers with a pair of handcuffs attached to the belt loops, and stalk about pretending I was Dracula (and why not? I kinda miss those days, now I think about it), but mostly, I was reborn as a raver, and I put my Sisters of Mercy records away in favour of Josh Wink.

(Well, actually, I must make it clear that I’ve never owned more than a Josh Wink cassette single in my life, and was still mostly listening to Morrissey, the Cure and the Tindersticks on my own time, but when I went out, I was dancing to electronic music and finding that I sorta kinda liked it.)

What was the reason for this fashion about-face? There were three main trigger points, I think – events that all occurred within the same few months, which, now I think back on it, I wonder if they weren’t the best months of my life. The first two – true love, and the discovery of ecstasy – I won’t dwell on here. It was the hair dye that really did it.

I had been dying my hair black (like my soul) since I was 16, and I imagined I would keep it that way forever. After all, Morrissey had pretty much instructed me to do so (I wear black on the outside, cos black is how I feel on the inside - thanks for the fashion tips, Moz!) and I would never do anything without his say so. I only ever intended to dye some so-blonde-they-look-white streaks into my black barnet, something that Goths will dally with occasionally when they want to stand out from the murky crowd.

So my friend Amy bleached two streaks into my black hair, and I was entranced. To this day, some 14 years later, one of my clearest memories is of me sitting in the canteen at uni picking over, most likely, a cold-as-stone and hard-as-bullets jacket potato, the high point of the canteen’s cuisine, holding one of my new icy blonde streaks out in front of me and gazing at it in wonder. It was like the first hair that ever there was – it was SO stripped of colour, and it was soft, and babyish… I was in love.

Imagine, I thought to myself, how much better my look, my love affairs, my whole LIFE would be if all of my hair looked like this? I pushed the rest of my inedible potato aside, commandeered Amy, and went back to her room to finish what we had started.

The only slight issue was that we didn’t really have enough bleach powder. Or solution. And we didn’t suss either of those facts out until we were about a third of the way through the process. Fortunately, we lived in student halls for arty types, and every third person bleached their hair. Thus followed a night of hair raising hilarity, where we would run out of one ingredient or another every 15 minutes (approx.) and Amy would have to go and knock on more doors, begging more bleaching ingredients. Somehow, we sort of got the lot done (and I can’t stress the ‘sort of’ enough there), but of course some of the bleach, by that point, had been on my hair for about three hours (and Jesus, did that sting) and some for about three minutes, so the effect was, well, avante garde to say the very least. A bloody mess, to be more accurate. Some of it was white, some was orange, and some still a muddy black. I looked like a tiger with a hangover, who had been rolling in some mud. But I loved it!

I stayed blonde for around 14 years after that. Sometimes I had red streaks (which the rest of the world always seemed to think were pink, but I bought the dye, I knew they were red!), sometimes I had dreadlock extensions, sometimes I had braids – but always, I was blonde. You’ll be relieved to learn that I learnt to dye my hair properly at some point during that time and was no longer sporting the drunken muddy tiger look.

Along with the blonde hair came a lust for clothes and shoes which, while I don’t mean to boast, I have rarely seen equalled. Yeah, I loved clothes when I was a Goth, but the items my code allowed me to buy were pretty limited. Suddenly, the shops – all of them – were my oyster, and I gaily threw student loan after student loan away on t-shirts from Etam (irony, you see?), crazy coloured trousers, coats that looked like muppets, glitter and accessories. Oh, the accessories. Tiaras, earrings, chokers, toe rings, anklets, and of course, the all-important water pistols.

It was around this time that I started collecting the best accessories of all – tattoos. I had been getting pierced for some time now… I had my belly button done at Glastonbury, aged 17… my tongue, as mentioned earlier, the day before I started uni… a lip piercing came next, and then I start to lose count of which piercing happened in which order. Strange places in my ears I hadn’t previously heard of, even a nipple… but fun as piercings are, they’re not a patch on the thrill of fresh new ink.

My first tattoo was the standard mistake. I went to a terrible shop, and I got a terrible design. I’m not sure I can even bring myself to tell you, such a cliché that it was, but my lust for doing slightly stupid things in the name of fashion is equal only to my lust for spilling my guts on the internet, so don’t fret, dear reader, I’ll let you in on the secret. It was the rose from the front of the first Manic Street Preachers album, the rose that Richie had on his arm. Except that Richie’s was in glorious colour and mine, natch, was black – coloured tattoos, I felt, were vile. Oh, and on the album cover, the rose had a banner across it saying ‘Generation Terrorists.’ Mine said ‘dead flower.’ Which I thought was impossibly romantic, but which now makes me cringe. It was too low down, too dark, a total mess – but like my tiger coloured hair, I loved it none the less. It lasted about ten years, I think, before I got it covered up with a giant Hello Kitty with wings. I’m not sure if the move from the Manic Street Preachers to a cartoon cat made entirely to trick children and foolish women out of all of their money is a step up or a step down in life. I shall leave you to ponder.

I collected tattoos like stickers when I was at uni. This was partially because there was a tattoo shop in between my house and the bus stop, and I had a major crush on the tattoo artist who did most of my first pieces. This guy was much better than the hack who did my rose. I think this guy (his name was Steve) did another three or four for me, as well as a handful of piercings. I imagined that we were friends and that he gave me a discount, but I’m not sure that was ever really true.

I won’t tell you about all my tattoos or we’ll be here way too long and you’ll all wander off to watch TV. I’ll just take a moment to mention that my favourites are the butterfly on my foot that I got as a freebie when I was working in a tattoo shop in Tottenham, another (very different!) butterfly I got at a convention in Brighton, and the Madonna faces on the inside of my left arm. I have one tattoo which has A Meaning – duh, duh, duh! – which is the fairly crappy dragon on my stomach. I got that to reclaim my body after a break-up, at a point where I was reading lots of feminist literature and used phrases like ‘reclaim my body’ on a regular basis. I have plans for many more – the next will be my favourite quote of all time, a line from Leonard Conman’s masterpiece Anthem, I just haven’t worked out where to put it yet – but alas, I doubt my funds will ever stretch to encompass my dreams.

So, I have squandered time, money and effort on Things To Make Me Look Good to a ridiculous degree over the past couple of decades. Shoes, dresses, shoes, trousers, shoes, t-shirts, shoes, make-up… I am a slave to them all. Did I mention the shoes? Learning to walk in high heels, aged about 30, when I saw some heels with skulls and crossbones on and knew I couldn’t live without them, has been a revelation for both myself and my osteopath, who can probably retire on the extra cash I’m giving him due to the damage my shoes do my back. It’s actually dangerous for me to go into Irregular Choice, on Carnaby Street, a treasure trove of fairy tale shoes, ALL OF WHICH I want. I might plan to buy one sale pair, but will be lucky to leave without three full price sets. And then will probably go back to get the other two pairs I had ruled out within the next week. Those shoes are like cocaine to me.

My most recent fashion fun excursion is my ever changing hair. For years now, I have dreamt of having hair like Carrie Bradshaw’s, circa the end of series 2, long, curly, blonde… but no matter how long I tried to grow it for, it never looked like that, so, on a whim, about 8 months ago, I cut it all off and got some red and black extensions in a bit of fringey bit at the side. And I have discovered the joy that is short hair and had three more new styles since. Cos, well, you need to get short hair cut pretty often anyway, right? So if you’re gonna shell out the cash, you might as well get something new. And plus, with short hair, if it looks horrible, who cares? Wear a hat for three weeks, and when you take it off, it’s all ok again!

Short hair also gave me the confidence to return to my roots, do something I’ve been talking about for years – channel Amy Whininghouse and go Back to Black. I now have a black Mohawk, and not only do I love it, but I know my 15-year-old self would be proud. Will I start listening to the Fields of the Nephilim again soon and writing swoony letters to Wayne Hussey? Only time will tell.

I Can't Get No Sleep

Keen followers of my ever-scintillating Face Book status updates will know, firstly, that I suffer from insomnia, and secondly that I’ve been trying Paul McKenna’s I Can Make you Sleep method for about a month now.

‘I suffer from insomnia.’ Listen to that phrase. Isn’t it dramatic? Doesn’t it sound romantic and desperate and as though I am a skinny heroine in a Victorian novel, fraily and beautifully dying of consumption, giddy and gorgeous as I cough blood into my lace hankerchief? I say that I suffer from insomnia, but how true I really think that is varies from day to day. Sometimes I think it’s a perfectly legitimate thing to think, and at other times I think I’m over-egging the pudding, protesting too much, making a fuss about nothing, and that all that actually happens is I wake up to pee a couple of times a night.

Certainly, I usually have very little problem actually getting to sleep – quite the opposite in fact, oftentimes I have huge amounts of trouble staying awake. The following things make me fall asleep, at times instantly: watching TV; listening to the radio or a talking book; warm, comfy seats; being at the cinema; being at the theatre; being in a lecture; being in a meeting; sitting on the tube; trying to read a complicated paper in my office. Honestly, at those moments I think narcolepsy would be a more fitting diagnosis for me than insomnia. It is really, really annoying.

Throughout my psychology degree, I had lectures in the evenings, and I would regularly have to sit in between my two best friends, one of whom had a tiny baby and averaged an hour’s sleep a week or something crazy (so what my excuse was, god only knows), and get them to both poke me in the ribs, one on either side, as soon as my eyes started to nod. Which was ALL THE TIME. It really was an issue… it’s very hard taking notes when your head is constantly doing that irresistible, hypnotic, nodding, lolling thing and your eyes are being pulled down as heavily as Barry White falling down the stairs. I would still try to make notes, even as I was falling asleep, with the result that many of my notes from those days are totally incomprehensible and scrawl across the page at mad angles, and include words based around the dreams I was even starting to have, rather than the lectures I was trying to listen to.

I used to tell myself that it was because the lectures were in the evenings and I was tired after a day of work, but as soon as I started my PhD and had lectures at 10am on Tuesday mornings, exactly the same thing happened to me, and I found myself fighting against sleep once again. I think it’s just as soon as I stop, as soon as I’m sitting and doing something passive, I just will fall asleep. And there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it. It shouldn’t have surprised me really, I was constantly falling asleep at my desk when I was a sub-editor and waking to find myself still typing, but now about monkeys and zombies and ponies rather than the latest happenings in EastEnders.

So why am I always so tired? Well, this brings us back to the initial diagnosis. I have – or think I have – insomnia. As discussed, I (usually) fall asleep fine. Sometimes I have trouble with the falling asleep as well, but no more than anyone does, I don’t think. But I wake up. Sometimes at 5am. Sometimes at 4am. Sometimes at 3am. And then it often feels like I’m awake for the rest of the night from that point onwards. I know that that isn’t the case, as I continue to have crazy dreams (recent highlights include a tiger trying to get into my house and a panic over some escaped snakes), but I’m really fairly sure that any sleep I do get from that point is so light that it would only take someone whispering my name to wake me back up again.

What is it like, being awake, or half awake, at that time of night? It’s not like (or not normally like) I’m staring at the ceiling, counting down the slowly passing seconds until I can get up. It’s a lot more confusing than that. I’m often not quite sure if I am awake or asleep, if what I was just dreaming is real or in my head. But after a while I will realise I’m awake enough to be asking myself that question and then I wonder how long I’ve been that way for and if I can get back to sleep and what will happen if I don’t.

It’s not so bad when – as is the case at the moment, oh constant reader, for I am alone again, natura-diddly, as Ned Flanders once said – when I’m sleeping alone. I have a fairly fail-safe way of getting myself either back to sleep or at least not fretting about being awake, which is listening to audio books. I find that that occupies enough of my brain to stop me being sad or worrying, and so allows me to drift back off again. Of course, if I’m with a fella, I fret about waking him up, or I’m in his bed where there is no handy stereo from the dark ages and collection of story tapes, and then I’m left to lie awake for much longer.

Why is it, I wonder, that no-one’s mind naturally turns to summer and friends and DJing and crisps when one is lying awake at night? Why, instead, do we all start thinking about that stupid thing we accidentally said to a friend five years ago? Or the time we started telling a story and then realised no-one was actually listening? Or the fact that, no matter how promising every relationship starts out like, they all turn to shit in ever decreasing lengths of time? Or the fact that one day, we’ll doubtless be alone, penniless, miserable, doomed to die alone in a hovel and not be discovered until our cats have eaten half of our faces? (Or is all the above just me?) What is it in human nature that makes those things so much easier to ponder at 4am than anything happy?

I started having sleeping problems when I was about 19, I think, which is of course approximately 100 million years ago now, ho ho ho. The problems have got better and worse since then, and have been the worst they’ve ever been in the past six months. This may be partly because I’ve spent a lot of the past six months confined to my bedroom, treating my bed as my own personal cinema/café/sofa/beauty parlour/music auditorium, something Paul McKenna thinks is a very bad idea, and a habit which I am now having to break. Break being the operative word – it feels like I’m slowing breaking each of my own fingers with a hammer, one by one, trying to stop always being in my bed when there’s no good reason to be somewhere else, but apparently this is what I must do.

I long to be able to sleep through the night. I love sleep so much. I love dreaming and switching off from the world, I love being cosy and warm and safe. Being awake is so often tiring and painful and boring – being asleep is never any of those things. Being tired makes life so much harder. I’m prone to pessimism at the best of times, but everything seems so much bleaker when I’ve only had three decent hours of sleep a night for the past week. The slightest slight can push me over the brink; the biscuits running out can make me want to self harm.

I won't lie... I am not above sleeping pills. Nytol one a night work for me sometimes but seem to have stopped. Melatonin, which many people seem to think is the mutt's nuts, doesn't make a dent. What works really, really nicely is a temazepam. Or two. Or, for preference, three, taken in a big handful. If anyone wants to send me some, I shall give you some babies in return.

(Naturally, I'm only joking. Of course a benzo addiction would be worse than insomnia. Can't quite think why at the moment, but I'm sure there is a reason, right?)

So, for my birthday, perhaps because she was bored of my incessant moaning and crying, my best friend and DJ life partner bought me Paul McKenna’s I Can Make you Sleep book and CD. And so the great experiment has begun!

I won’t bore you with all the teeny tiny details, but the premise of the book essentially works like this… follow all these rules, and you will sleep. These are the rules:

Get up half an hour earlier every day,

Only go to bed when actually tired,

No TV in bed,

No TV an hour before bed,

Listen to the CD when going to sleep,

Bed is only for sleep, doing the rude dance and reading Macca’s book. (No other books. He reckons this is cos his book has hypnotic suggestions in it and is therefore ok, although other books aren’t, but I can’t help feeling that this is nothing but shameless self-promotion and hence I take no part in it and choose to read nothing at all in bed. Ha! That’ll show him! Sleep fascist!)

No eating three hours before bed,

Eat healthily,

No caffeine after 2pm,

No napping during the day,

And this, the worst... no alcohol.

There’s also a load of relaxation exercises and stuff in there… things like speaking to yourself in a nicer tone of voice rather than a fretful, nagging one while you can’t sleep. It’s all pretty common sense stuff, really.

So far, so simple, right? Well, no, actually… even the first one is a puzzler for me. Get up half an hour earlier every day… but I get up at different times most days! Saturdays I need to be at work by 9.30, so need to get up at 8. Sundays I can get up when I like. Mondays I try not to get up too early as I work til 1am. Tuesdays I don’t set an alarm as I won’t have got in til 2 and don’t need to be at work til 12.30. Wednesdays I have yoga at 7.45 so need to get up at 6.30. Thursdays and Fridays I aim to be at uni for 9 which means getting up around 7.30. How does one reconcile this??? I made the executive decision to get up at 6.30 every day, as I certainly didn’t want to get up earlier than I already was for yoga. Or at least, that’s what I said to myself, but now I think about it, I was really only doing that on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays as my late night shift on Mondays means that I just don’t think getting up at 6.30 on either Mondays or Tuesdays is sensible, and even I’m not psychotically morning-ish enough to want to get up at 6.30 on the weekends. I figure that just not lying around in bed trying to get back to sleep but instead accepting that once I’m awake, I’d better get up, is sensible enough for the other days.

Trying to time not eating for three hours before bed, not watching TV for an hour before bed and going to bed when tired so that the three coordinate can be something of a headache, especially when the times I get home from work/uni are just as random as the times I get up. I am still trying to do more reading than watching TV, but I’ve been slipping in recent weeks.

As I said earlier, I think the hardest thing, even harder than giving up drinking (which, admittedly, I only took up yesterday, I spent most of December drunk, but didn’t we all?) (we didn’t? Oh, crap) is to only use my bed for sleeping. My bed is my favourite place in the world to be. One of my biggest joys in life is lying in bed of a morning posting nonsense on the internet and listening to Shaun Keaveney. It’s just not the same shivering on the sofa. I had, in fact, all but decided that it wasn’t worth it and I’d rather keep sleeping badly and sitting on my bed during the day, but reverting to bed-sitting over the past week or so has also coincided with a huge, freshly baked batch of depression, straight from the over-dramatic emotion-oven (although which came first I really couldn’t say) so I am forced to admit that it probably is worth it after all.

So… does it work? This is doubtless the question on everyone’s lips! The answer so far would have to be that it does, partly, work. I became somewhat less disciplined over Christmas, but when I was doing it semi-properly at the beginning of December, I was sleeping semi-better, only waking up once in the night and on one momentous occasion (a Monday night/Tuesday morning) not waking up once for eight hours, which was the first time that had happened to me in years and years. And I can only blame myself for it not working entirely, as I was still drinking and not really doing the relaxation exercises properly.

However, it is a new year and time for us all to improve ourselves, and so now I’m going to really try to do it properly – not drinking, the NLP nonsense that makes me cringe a bit, the whole nine yards. It could even be that the key to my entire world o misery is tied up in my inability to sleep, and if I can cure these problems by doing what Paul McKenna tells me, that seems a small price to pay. I will report back. Try no to sit too close to the edges of your seats… it will hurt if you tumble off.